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Barnsley villagers hit superfast broadband target

Residents of the village of Dodsworth in Barnsley have hit their target of raising £11,000 to install a BT street cabinet to provide the area with superfast broadband. The target was reached little less than a month after the campaign started. 

The village isn’t part of the telco’s £2.5 billion fibre rollout and said this was because of costs. 

The village needed the money, half of the £22,000 cost of actually installing the box. The local council and BT agreed to contribute some of the costs with the rest being raised by residents and businesses in the area. 

Barnsley villagers hit superfast broadband target
Speeding up: Local fundraising sees Dodworth joining the fast lane

“Based on 222 households pledging up to £50 and 11 households pledging less (from £5 to £35) we have made our target,” said Jon Clapham, a spokesman for the campaign on the village’s campaign website. “However, we still have 41 homes yet to respond and assuming they are positive we will reduce the burden below £50 per household.” 

As reported by Recombu, the campaign was kicked of earlier this month after BT said that the works to install the cabinet in the village was “not commercially viable.” 

Despite this, a BT spokesman told local paper Barnsley Chronicle that it had “worked with the local community and agreed to cover a substantial amount of the costs but have asked the local community to also contribute.” 

The work not only meant replacing an old telephone cabinet with a new fibre-capable one, but it would also involve a costly and complex rearrangement of underground cabling in order to bring high-speed internet to the area. 

“The underground cabling from the exchange will be rearranged enabling engineers to install a copper and a fibre street cabinet which will give almost all the residents superfast broadband speeds,” the spokesman said. 

Image: Edward Townend/Flickr

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